With the increasing capabilities of modern mobile devices and their corresponding increase in usage, temperature considerations of such devices across various modes of operation can become increasingly important. For example, temperature variations across one or more dies within integrated circuits used in mobile devices may be an important design parameter for various functional components, including Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASICs), Systems on a Chip (SoCs), Microprocessors, Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), Application Specific Processors (ASPs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays, (FPGAs), memories, etc.
In particular, the start-up and shutdown of various devices and different voltage domains, and the onset of “temperature inversion” in deep submicron devices, has highlighted the desirability for temperature tracking which can be voltage and process independent. Additional information regarding how temperature varies (i.e., temperature gradients) across one or more dies within an integrated circuit can be useful in monitoring performance and power consumption.
Given the ever-present desirability to extend battery life, the tight power constraints of mobile devices can drive the motivation for temperature monitoring approaches which consume less power directly, while also reducing resource consumption (e.g., processor cycles) on other subsystems.